Decisions, Decisions
by mmooch
Summary: It's Thanksgiving. There's a dinner to make and a spirit trying to kill them. Buffy's *so* not in the mood for any other surprises. WARNING: non-canon character death.


**Decisions, Decisions**

Summary: It's Thanksgiving. There's a dinner to make and a spirit trying to kill them. Buffy's *so* not in the mood for any other surprises. WARNING: non-canon character death.

Warning: I don't know; maybe language and innuendo somewhere along the way.

Timeline: season 4 _'Pangs'_ BtVS.

Challenge: just my own wish fulfillment for this scene.

A/N: How many of us wanted to see this happen?

Thanks to my betas: none.

Disclaimer: BtVS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

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><p><strong>Giles' apartment<strong>

Her day was not going well at all!

Buffy wanted one holiday where she could be normal girl and have a nice dinner with her friends – since her family wasn't around to celebrate with – but apparently that was too much to ask for. First with the angry spirit guy, which of course had to distract the others from doing their part for the meal. Okay, fine…she was being kind of ridiculous with wanting this to be perfect, and right now she'd settle for satisfactory, but dammit! She didn't get Halloween off…_again_, so she deserved a calm day!

The Slayer growled softly as she listened to Willow try to convince Giles that the murdering spirit was justified in being psychotically enraged. She loved her best friend, but sometimes couldn't figure out what that girl was thinking. What made this evil any different from say…a vampire? They eat people because that's what they have to do to survive, and they were around longer than humans too. Or at least demons as a group were around longer.

They were wasting time arguing politics when they should be researching how to get rid of the guy. That was the brainiacs' job in their group. Buffy slayed, Xander provided support, Willow and Giles researched…and Anya made inappropriate comments with the occasional gem of information – usually by accident.

If one more thing happened to screw up her dinner…

As if it were prophesied, there was a frantic knock at the door. Buffy stormed over to see who was there, and groaned when she saw Spike standing there, huddled under a blanket to avoid going up in flames from the mid-day sun.

"What do you want?" she demanded, crossing her arms in annoyance.

Spike kept pressing against the invisible barrier keeping him out. "Let me in!" he cried.

She listened as he gave his reason for why he 'deserved' sanctuary. Leaving him outside, Buffy had a small conference with Giles about their decision. "What do you think?"

"He _could_ have valuable information," Giles allowed hesitantly. Since it was his apartment Spike wanted access to, he wasn't thrilled about giving it.

Looking over her shoulder at the smoking vampire, Buffy seemed just as skeptical. "But this is Spike we're talking about. I wouldn't put it past him to tell us a bunch lies until he figures out a different way to feed on humans. And besides, who knows how long that not-being-able-to-kill thing will last. Maybe once he gets some fresh blood in him, it will wipe out whatever is stopping him."

Giles nodded in agreement, "That's a valid concern. Without knowing how he's being controlled, we have no idea if it could wear off. Very well, we'll keep looking for information elsewhere."

Buffy walked back over to the door and grabbed the blanket Spike had. He gave out a sigh of relief, thinking she was going to let him in, so he was shocked when she pushed back hard while keeping a tight grip on the blanket. "We just can't trust you," she explained calmly as he burned away to ashes.

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><p>AN: *sigh* Just imagine how wonderfully different things could have been with no Spike for the rest of the series – no offense to James Marsters. No eww-Spuffy in _'Something Blue'_ and if Giles still got turned into a Fyarl demon, I'm sure Anya would know the language…probably even better than Spike.


End file.
